Cheating

When my friend took her by the waist to guide her into the kitchen, something ignited in me. It wasn’t jealousy. It was something darker that I chose not to put out.

I arrived at the gym with damp hair, no underwear, and trembling. He was waiting at the door. When he locked it behind me, I knew there was no turning back.

In the restaurant I told her to act like my girlfriend. She switched chairs slowly. Neither of us said what that meant.

They asked me to keep her sister company and look the other way. It was a reasonable plan until Valeria decided she wasn’t going to be ignored.

I went to the gym without underwear on purpose, so everything would show. After weeks of stares, he finally came over with a proposition that left no room for doubt.

The first night I went out with his permission was the last time I needed to ask for it.

I was standing on the other side of the ajar door, seeing what I should never have seen. What I did next changed the way we looked at each other forever.

Three days unable to use the bathroom, a luxury office, and a trans doctor who charged me her own way. What happened inside there isn’t forgotten.

Carlos told me he was a dangerous man. He was right. But no one had looked at me like that in months, with that kind of raw hunger that doesn’t know how to hide itself.

Valentina said she was going grocery shopping. That afternoon, Nicolás canceled his meeting and came home early. Marcos’s jacket was hanging on the coat rack.

I went in asking for a wax. I left with trembling legs and my body marked by hands that knew every inch of my skin better than I did.

The doctor closed the office door with a calm that was anything but professional. I was on the exam table in a paper gown, and I already knew I wouldn’t leave the same.

When I saw Yésica go up the stairs behind him that first night, I knew none of the women serving drinks at that stop would come out of that summer unchanged.

I got up at three in the morning because of moans I couldn’t ignore. My mother’s door was ajar, and I stood frozen in the hallway.

I had been reading the evening news for ten years when an ivory envelope arrived at reception. Inside was an offer only a man like him could make.

Don Ernesto was twenty-seven years older than me, with rough laborer’s hands and a hungry gaze I pretended not to see. That night, I closed the curtains myself.

I was 48, in a stable marriage, and living a perfect lie. Every week I crossed that door and became another woman. One I never knew existed.

Rodrigo looked without hiding it by the hot springs. Sofía had her eyes closed and her long neck exposed to the sun. Claudia saw it and said nothing.

When Roberto’s car disappeared around the bend, Sofía looked at Raquel. They had three hours, two men waiting, and a plan that seemed foolproof.

When I broke the red seal on the envelope, I knew my stable life had crossed a line. What I didn’t expect was for my husband to beg me to accept that indecent proposal.